Here’s an illustration I did for De’Lunula’s scathing film review of “Coming Through The Rye”. In one picture I got to depict my love of Kanye, my hate* of Salinger, and throw in a dead Beatle to boot.

*Ok, hate is overdoing it- I don’t hate Salinger. I really, really, really think “Catcher In The Rye” is insanely overrated (but I did enjoy “Franny and Zooey”).

Last month I performed as part of the Alwun House’s annual Erotic Poetry & Music Festivus. This was the fourth time I’ve done the fest, and for this show I wanted to do a bit that I’ve been meaning to try for years. I used to work over at Zia Records on Thunderbird, and one of the items we got in regularly were “Penis Pokey” books. These were mock-kid board books with holes cut in the middle for you to play “pokey” with .

I had the idea of making one for Frank Herbert’s “Dune” and turn that wonderful, lengthy, complex piece of world-building into one long dick joke. And so this year I did it: I drew 7 panel “pages” for the pokey book, got onstage, and for seven minutes told the story of “Dune” using these panels and strategically inserting a dildo into the cut-out holes whenever a sandworm or weapon appeared.

When I first conceived of this idea, I had thought about going all the way with the idea and actually use my penis for the pokey, but decided against it on the grounds of:

Full frontal nudity onstage is extremely distracting. It’s hard to be funny, hold an audience’s attention AND go The Full Monty at the same time.

I didn’t particularly feel like copping an indecent exposure charge and have to spend the next few months going door to door telling my neighbors I do sex offensive performance art.

Being humble here: The sandworms need to look huge for the joke to really work. I have an average-sized, modest “sandworm”. It would not look impressive on a stage. Even if it was festooned with blinking lights or wore a little crown.

This Thursday I’ll be performing once again at Lawn Gnome Publishing’s PEP Rally variety show. This week the topic is a subject near and dear to my heart: the occult! I’m excited to be trying out a new bit…. and I’m also excited because I’ll be selling a new occult-y zine, “Elephant Head”, at the show! The first print run is only 23 copies, and each individual copy comes with its own special insert. I’ll be selling them for $5 (and if you happen to be at the show and want one but are short on cash- we can work out some kind of trade).

I started working on “Elephant Head” back towards the end of August, and then put it on the shelf. Over the last couple of weeks, inspiration struck again and I dusted it off and added some finishing textual touches and it is good to go!